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Do you ever set a game's voice audio to a language you don't speak? When and why?

RalchAC

Member
Hate this idea that emotion and sincerity = cheesy and over the top., don't understand it.

I'm not meaning that.

There is a difference between emotion and sincerity and a 15 year old loli screaming with a super high pitched voice Sugoiiiiii when the main character defeats an enemy with style.
 

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
I used to set the voice to Japanese in Virtua Fighter because the English voices were terrible. They might be equally as bad in Japanese but I can't tell.

you can't change the voices in virtua fighter. some characters speak english, others speak japanese.
 

AlucardGV

Banned
I sincerely wish/hope this comes to Zelda: Breath of the Wild via DLC.

why not as a voice in the option menu? the voices are already in the cart, no reason to pay for it. just let me select them, no reason to pay for it

anyway, to anser the thread yes, i do. i couldn't do it on trails of the cold steel so i turned the voice volume to zero
 

jennetics

Member
I'd never done it until Final Fantasy XV came out. The English dub threw me off (mostly because of Cindy/Gladio/Ignis) so I used the Japanese dub instead. The only issue I had then, however, was that the Japanese dub said things differently than what the English subs had written. Minor annoyance but I dealt with it.
 

tsab

Member
99,999999% of the time there is no Greek Audio so I select English, except in some occasions with japanese games that have a better japanese audio (better atmosphere).

I don't mind because I always enable subtitles.

I wish I could select japanese audio with BotW
with english text
the trailer had a better Zelda voiceover than this mediocre British Zelda.
 

Thud

Member
In Klonoa there's a made up language I used.

When I'll finally play the witcher 3 I'll probably play with Polish voice acting.
 

PSqueak

Banned
In any given game he's in and gives me the option, i set Ryu to japanese, he just sounds wrong in any other language.
 

Loomer

Member
Always do it for Japanese games, also played AC2 in Italian, Metro in Russian, ect.

As for why, I'd say it offers a nice break from everything being in English since so many games are set in the US.

I watch a ton of foreign films as well, so I'm definitely not part of the "I'd rather understand what they're saying" crowd.
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
Japanese if its anime or anime-like, I wouldnt play Witcher in Japanese for example.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
LOTS of times
Because I don't have a problem with subtitles in language I speak

Assasin's creed is a good example ... but basicaly every game I choose the original language.

And games like SF, characters voices are to the closest to the ones they came from
Agree with this. Have no problems with reading and hearing something dubbed feels a bit "off" even if it's well done, taking me out of the experience a bit.

There is the rare occasion where a dub outperforms or equals the original, but it takes a talented studio to deliver that. You need a good translation, voice direction, and voice actors that can all do their jobs well while keeping the tone of the original script.

For a reverse example of what everyone is saying about Japanese games, it's very very obvious that Resident Evil was meant to be played in English even if the Japanese script came first. They didn't even have Japanese dubs until Revelations I think. The only game that's actually good in Japanese is Revelations 2 and that's only because the translators went HAM on the English dialogue for some reason.
 
Only rarely, considering Japanese-developed games. I much prefer English dubs over Japanese dubs, gives a stronger connection, especially hearing emotional phrases/moments directly. And most English dubs of higher profile jp games have been at least solid for quite a while now, from recent FFs and Personas to the Nier duo, etc.

I will, however, let the lack of an English dub go for niche stuff for which it would be unreasonable, like a 2D shooter or a Senran Kagura.

The only time I recently switched to jp for a short while was for some Neptunia games, where the English dub is unfortunately selective, leaving some side scenes unvoiced.
 

Selddon

Banned
I sometimes do it for JRPGs with voiced dialogue since I don't like reading subtitles in games and JRPGs usually just always have text dialogue. Most of the time I can't be bothered to change anyway.
 

vixlar

Member
In Latin America, most games in Spanish are dubed in European Spanish (fortunately now we're getting both Spanish dubs in most games) and I don't like that. So I rather play in English.

And sometimes, it is diffcult to discuss in forums because many times they change the names of items and characters or places or you don't get the translation... World Of Warcraft forums make it easy in having a tool that let you seek for any item or quest in your own language and discuss about it even when the forum is in other language.
 

Nosgoroth

Member
Always the original language if at all possible. If not available but English is, then that. I might refuse to play a game if I have to deal with a Spanish dub, even in the cases where it's good. I'm just so accustomed to English or Japanese for my media consumption that games, books and to a lesser extent movies in my language feel jarring.

My ES-only digital copy of Layton 5 weeps.
 
I generally always set Japanese games to the Japanese voice audio if it's the original casting if I'm given the choice. Games from Japan originally in English, like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta will stay in English, though. Just a proponent of the original castings. I also took a class on Japanese and would like to learn more someday soon, so hearing it spoken helps me from getting rusty.

I have had a few Japanese games that only had the English dub that put me off completely and others that actually had enjoyable dubs. Tales of is a series I could never enjoy the dubs for, so I'm glad we're passed that. I just started Trails of Cold Steel and was initially bummed there was Japanese VO, but I was actually impressed with the English dub. Persona 3/4 also have a great dubs, but after subsequent playthroughs in Japanese and watching the related media in Japanese, I vastly prefer the Japanese cast for all Persona games, personally. Though, I vastly prefer the English cast for Xenoblade.
 

MrCinos

Member
I always choose original language + English subtitles combination. The only exception so far were the Witcher games simply because I can't take Polish language seriously. There are enough similarities with my native language to make it sound really weird and unintentionally funny.
 

Nista

Member
I decided to play ME Andromeda in German with a English subtitles. So far it's made the cutscene jank less annoying to me than if I was listening to English. The only time it is problematic is when multiple voices start crosstalking at once, and the subtitles can't keep up.

Since I only know a little German, it gives it a more alien feel to me. And the Krogans sound properly gruff in German. My native speaker SO doesn't much like the VO though.
 

DaciaJC

Gold Member
Battlefield used to have the option to set each faction's voiceovers to their native language, everything - the commander, player commands, shouts of "Grenade!" and such. No longer for whatever dumb reason (lol at playing as the Ottomans while being directed by some posh English lady in BF1), but in BF2 the MEC was my favorite faction for this very reason.
 

zMiiChy-

Banned
Japanese games, always.
I love the language and English dubs are often.. not as good.
They just can't capture that cuteness.
 

4Tran

Member
I do it all the time with Japanese games because it's neat, and some of the Japanese cadence is fun to listen to. The main exception would be the Dynasty Warriors games because the names in those games are spoken with the Japanese pronunciation, and the Japanese pronunciations sound wrong.
 

Nasbin

Member
I will do this for any game with heavy story elements and poor VA, so lots of JRPGs. Recently, I switched the VA on Horizon to French at some point and found it to be a massive improvement. I really liked Aloy's VA but some of the background/secondary character VA in English is distracting. Compare Nil's French VA with Nil's English VA and it's kind of mindblowing how much more effective and fitting the French VA is. VA can blend together a lot easier in a language you don't understand (it also helps that French and Japanese just sound nice to listen to). Kudos to Guerilla for including the language option.
 

Älg

Member
I did try to play Metro Last Light with russian voices. I came to the conclusion that I could not read the subtitles and focus on actually playing the game at the same time, so I changed it back to english. Real shame I think; it really adds to the ambiance to have characters speak a language that makes sense storywise.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
For such a stunning depiction of revolutionary France, this caused a dissonance that got on my nerves. So I just set the language to French and relied on subtitles. I only played it for 5-10 hours, but I enjoyed it much more that way.

I've never understood this argument/complaint. Forcing some bullshit stereotypical French accents (like how they treated the Italians in the English voices for the AC2 trilogy), is not the right approach. That's not how French sounds to native French ears.

I'm all for listening to the native language and using subtitles, but if it's a dub, then the language it's dubbed into shouldn't sound like a bunch of non-native speakers doing the voice acting.

Bad/lazy translations. There are so many better alternatives in English for "I won't forgive you!" in most situations.

Indeed, but it's a lot easier to accept a lazy localization when it's just text than when it's actually being acted out by a native speaker of your language. At that point, it becomes cringe-worthy dialogue and is uncomfortable to listen to.
 

Mr.Fox

Member
I always prefer the original audio language, whatever language it is. It's most likely the audio with better quality because it had the director's guidance and quality control.
 
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